'Midnight's Children' problems.

[aditya dev sood]

I'm sorry to interject so sharply, but am I the only one who finds it
extremely problematic to either typify Rushdie's novel as "very south
asian" or to disavaw that there are strands within it which reverberate
against "postcolonial literatures" since WWII, which may also find their
antecdents in european novels between the war -- themselves never
conceived in a vacum, nor untainted by exposure to the then-colonies? 


Rushdie is no high scholar of 'the Indian Tradition,' but as the product
of someone who has lived in India, Pakistan and then England, his work
demands critical apparatuses which are at least as cosmopolitan, and
considerably more sophisticated. 'Either-Or' questions are specifically
disallowed by these texts. What Rushdie and, perhaps Desai as well, are
doing is to demand that this mixed, polyglossic, doggerel texture of our
world be acknowledged and articulated. 


Has Indology (the mind-frame, the discourse, the discipline, the listserver) 
responded to this challenge? Should it? How?


Aditya Dev Sood
adsood at midway.uchicago.edu